Conservative Mom Group Is Real Mad at Burger King for Bad Word in Ad
Credit to Author: Jelisa Castrodale| Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 00:50:45 +0000
A few days ago, it felt like the United States was one more inflammatory White House tweet from going to war with Iran. Australian officials have started throwing vegetables out of helicopters to try to keep the country's fire-ravaged animal populations alive. Greta Gerwig wasn't nominated for a Best Director Oscar, and neither was any other woman.
Everything is shit right now, is what we're saying, and that's why One Million Moms' latest online tantrum is hilariously unimportant. The self-described "pro-family" (read: anti-LGBTQ) organization has just launched a campaign urging Burger King to stop airing an Impossible Whopper commercial that it considers "extremely destructive and damaging."
The ad, which debuted more than four months ago, shows dozens of people queuing up for the grand opening of an Impossible pop-up. Just before the door opens, the restaurant's sign comes down, revealing that they've all been standing outside a Burger King that's now serving the Impossible Whopper. "Damn, that's good," one man says, his mouth full of plant-based patty –– and that's the part that One Million Moms says is going to absolutely ruin the Children of Today.
"One man is completely shocked that the burger is not beef, so he uses the d-word to describe how he feels about himself for being deceived by the taste of the burger," the organization wrote on its online petition.
"One Million Moms finds this highly inappropriate. When responding to the taste test, he didn’t have to curse. Or if, in fact, it was a real and unscripted interview in which the man was not an actor, then Burger King could have simply chosen to edit the profanity out of the commercial."
As of this writing, just over 9,200 people have signed the online statement acknowledging that they are "highly offended" by the word 'damn', urging Burger King to either stop airing the ad or edit the fuck out of it, and telling the fast food chain that they'll stop eating in its restaurants "until you clean up your advertising." (VICE has reached out to Burger King for comment but has not yet received a response.)
Yes, One Million Moms is the same organization that protested the Zola commercial that featured a lesbian couple trying to plan their wedding, and yes, it threw such a fit that the Hallmark Channel temporarily pulled the spot from its broadcasts. (The network then reversed that decision, following significant backlash.) It has also gone after Kit-Kat for using the Missy Elliott song "Work It" during one of its own commercials. "The focus of the commercial is the sexual message and not the product itself," the Moms harrumphed.
One Million Moms is a division of the Mississippi based American Family Association (AFA), which has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. One of the AFA's recent initiatives was to contact Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy to express its concern over the restaurant's decision to stop donating to organizations that oppose LGBTQ rights, and to question its financial support of Covenant House, an organization that refuses to discriminate against LGBTQ youth.
"Covenant House also openly promotes homosexuality as normal, natural, and healthy," AFA president Tim Wildmon wrote. "This was evident in Covenant House's participation in the NYC gay pride parade and a number of other efforts that make it clear the ministry does not hold to a biblical view of human sexuality. As a result, AFA will continue to monitor Chick-fil-A's corporate giving, at least for the foreseeable future."
These moms seem damn hard to please.
This article originally appeared on VICE US.